June 16 (Bloomberg) -- The amount of money low-income
families spend for housing affects their children’s cognitive
ability, with too little or too much having a negative impact, a
study from Johns Hopkins University showed.

Children’s reading and math ability suffer when families
spend more than half of or less than 20 percent of their income
on housing, researchers at Baltimore, Maryland-based Johns
Hopkins said last week, adding that 30 percent of income is an
optimal amount.

The study underlines the importance of affordable housing
for families with children, the researchers said. Families that
spend most of their money on housing have less to pay for
educational enrichments like books and computers necessary for
children’s development, the study showed, while those that spend
too little risk putting their children in an unhealthy
environment.

“Rather than finding a bargain in a good neighborhood,
they’re living in low-quality housing with spillover effects on
their children’s development,” Sandra Newman, a Johns Hopkins
professor of policy studies and one of the study’s co-authors,
said in the report.

Families that cut their spending to 30 percent from more
than half their income spent an average of $98 more on their
children per month.

“Not a lot of money, but enough to make a difference,”
according to the report.

The study focused on families with incomes at or below 200
percent of the federal poverty level. Housing costs had no
effect on children’s physical or social well-being, the research
showed.

“People are making trade-offs, and those trade-offs have
implications for their children,” co-author C. Scott Holupka
said in the report.